hehe, pretty much the same here i park as far away as possible. have it on the ls460l and i only use it coz' it's there, otherwise i won't even bother i am too old for all these wiring stuff, hehe

 

Same here. I love the feature just wish it was automatic or able to be done with the car off.

 

yeah, I hate how I have to turn on the car again to fold them. Not so much I need to turn on the car, but that the steering wheel will come out and make it hard to get out of the seat again.

 

I rarely use the auto fold feature of my GS unless I'm in a really tight spot. It would be nice to have an "AUTO" defeat for the mirrors. I would think having the mirrors auto fold when you turn the car on and off causes more wear and tear on the mirror motors. They weren't designed to be operated on that kind of interval.

 

anyone know a mechanic shop that would do this, im willing to pay no more than $200

 

very true, even on the ls460 i think the tear and wear could be significant over time. just look at the tilt down mirrors on all lexus models, i have seen more than a few failure cases over time. those gears are likely plastic (rather than metal), so tear and wear could be something. (at least the gears for tilt down feature, it's all plastic)

 

Yeah Toyota makes those gears out of plastic. That's why it's easy to "pop" the mirror into any position if you put enough force on it.

 

But the problem is that you need to have the ignition on in order to activate the switch to close the mirror. So you need to supply few seconds of reserve power to the folding mirror circuit after the ignition is turned off.

 

Well here's a reason to fold them ... to protect the mirror glass from theft.

Side-view mirrors swiped from 17 cars in Tarrytown, police say

 

you can't be serious right? even with the mirrors folding, all they need is just flip them open again with close to no force...

 

Thats what the relay is for, it stores the power to the mirror circuit until it senses that the ignition circuit has changed value. When that occurs it activates the fold/unfold sequence.

The next task would be to wire the mirror motor's power source to yet another relay activated by the same ignition status.

its no harder than doing HID relays. its just a matter of having some warm weather here in NYC to actually get out there and do it.

 

ACTUALLY, they already have relays like this. My old civic had JDM power folding mirrors which I wired myself. If you check ebay they have the boxes for like 30-50 bucks.

These boxes have built in relays and whatever is needed to make mirrors fold in and out. It has a 5 wire pigtail on it as well.
1 - power (constant - str8 to the battery with a fuse if u wanted)
2 - ground
3 - switch (hook this up to w/e that will make it close/open such as putting the shifter into park)
4 - R mirror
5 - L mirror

Thats the easy work, all you is figure what wire is what on the car.

Basically all you need to find on the car wiring is:
right motor for folding wire
left motor for folding wire
wire that gives the signal that its going into and out of park

 

Yes, I was serious. I've never tried to flip them open by forcing them.

 

you can try, it's very easy

 

sorry to rehash the dead but relays don't store energy and to me the sensible mod here would be to add the relay as suggested but connect it to the parking break light or the parking pulse that unlocks the doors.

It's very funny to me that with all the "auto" functions the GS has (steering wheel on start, backup camera - tilting mirrors - sunshade on reverse, door locks on park, etc...) they wouldn't have a auto folding option... who wants to have to fold their mirror in every time they park on a shady street? i really think this was an oversight and/or eff up that they left "as is" to save face.

And yes to me this feature is very very important but would also like a way for it to be disabled.